Chapter 2 — Fake Lover Turns Out to Be Fiancee

The Eastern bus station welcomed Bach Dang with a wave of sound and light unprecedented in his twenty-five years of life. The loud sound of car horns, the sound of loudspeakers calling out the names of buses, the sound of people soliciting passengers, all mixed together into a chaos that made him stand still in the middle of the flow of people passing by, clutching the cloth bag on his shoulder as if afraid it would be swept away at any moment.

"My God, what kind of strange shirt is that?" A young girl passed by and looked back at Bach Dang, giggling with her friend.

Bach Dang bent down to look at the rough blue clothes he was wearing, not understanding why people were paying so much attention. In the mountains, everyone dresses like that, it's not strange. But in this crowd of people wearing clothes of all styles and vibrant colors, his outfit truly stands out like an out-of-tune note in a modern symphony.

He stood in the middle of the bus stop, looking around bewilderedly, not knowing which direction to go. Master only told me to go to Ho Chi Minh City, but the city is so large, where do you know to start searching? In his mind, there was only a vague address written in an envelope that he hadn't dared to open and read, and a naive belief that if he left, he would arrive.

Just as he was wondering, a young man, smartly dressed, with shiny combed hair, approached with a warm smile as if he had known him for a long time.

"Hey there, buddy, looking at the way you're dressed, you can tell that it's the first time you've come from the countryside to the city, right?" The man patted Bach Dang's shoulder intimately, his voice as sweet as sugar cane. "My name is Phat. I've worked here for a long time. I thought my friend seemed strange so I just asked him. Where are you going?"

Bach Dang looked at the person opposite him, a vague sense of vigilance arose in his heart because his master's instructions were still ringing in his ears, but that smiling face made it difficult for him to doubt. From childhood to adulthood, he never had to learn how to distinguish people's hearts, because on the mountain there was only him and his master, no one ever deceived anyone.

"I came down from the mountain, intending to find a place to stay temporarily, then found an address in the city." Bach Dang answered honestly, making the man named Phat's eyes light up as if he had just caught a bargain.

"Oh really, it's such a good time." Laughing brighter, he pulled Bach Dang to sit on a nearby stone bench. "Dude, what kind of money do you have? Let me see. These days, if you don't pay attention, you'll get scammed. Luckily, you met me, but the touts at this bus station are very cruel."

Hearing that, Bach Dang became even more confident, thinking that this person was kind and proactively warned him about bad people. He took out from his cloth bag a few sparkling white silver bars, the silver bars that his master had prepared as a fee, the only currency he had known how to use for the past twenty-five years.

Phat saw a few pieces of silver, his eyes widened for a split second then quickly regained his composure. He picked it up and turned it around in his hand, pretending to understand. "Oh my god, my friend keeps old money like this. When he goes out, no one will accept it. He has to exchange it for new money to be able to spend it. Luckily he met me, but at the money exchange places out there, they are very picky. If you don't cheat and lose everything, you will be seriously exposed."

"So how can we change it?" Bach Dang asked, his voice full of confidence.

"Let me help you out, consider it a fateful meeting." Phat patted his chest, looking generous. "I know a gold shop nearby, they specialize in buying antique silver bars, the price is very high. My friend gave me all this silver, I ran in to exchange it for him, I'll bring the cash out and give it back to my friend later, with just a small service fee."

Bach Dang, with all the innocence of a person who had never stepped out of the mountains or forests, nodded without hesitation and gave all the small amount of silver to Phat. That was the entire route his master had prepared for him, but he did not think about staying safe, because in his mind, the person who kindly warned him about the bad guys was definitely not the bad guy.

"Dude, sit here and wait for me. I'll be right back in fifteen minutes." Phat quickly stuffed the money into his coat pocket, gave one last smile, then walked straight into the crowded crowd, his gait getting faster and faster, disappearing more and more.

Bach Dang sat on the stone bench, his chin in his hand, his eyes following the direction the person named Phat had gone, still a little excited waiting for the new money to be exchanged. Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty minutes. Then an hour.

The afternoon sun began to shine harshly overhead, the flow of people entering and exiting the bus station continued to be busy, but the figure of the man named Phat never appeared again.

At this point, no matter how naive, Bach Dang also began to feel that something was wrong. He stood up, walked around the bus station to search, and asked a few nearby street vendors.

"Uncle, have you seen a guy wearing a white shirt, with shiny hair, named Phat passing by here?" Bach Dang asked an old lady selling sugarcane juice near the bus station gate.

The old lady looked at Bach Dang from head to toe, her eyes both pitiful and shy. "Oh my god, I've been tricked by him. That guy specializes in standing at this bus station, stalking people who are just going to the city for the first time, luring them into exchanging money for something and then running away. How many people have been tricked by him, the police know his face but haven't caught him yet, he keeps changing places."

Hearing this, Bach Dang felt like he was being poured a bucket of cold water from the top of his head to his feet. He stood frozen in the middle of the flow of people, his hands clasped together, a feeling of shame and confusion occupying his entire mind. All the money his master had prepared for him was now just a bitter story about the gullibility of someone going down the mountain for the first time.

"So what should I do now, grandma?" Bach Dang asked, his voice choked, for the first time in his life he clearly felt the so-called helplessness.

The old lady selling sugarcane juice sighed, poured him a glass of sugarcane juice free of charge, and placed it in his hand as a way of comforting him. "Drink to quench your thirst and then move on. In life, everyone must learn at least once to remember. Do you have any other money?"

Bach Dang shook his head, rummaged through all the pockets of his shirt, leaving only his master's letter and a piece of jade pendant carefully hidden in his chest, the only thing Phat could not take away because he kept it too carefully. In addition, he had no money left in his hand, in a strange city, without knowing anyone.

He sat down on the steps near the bus station gate, his eyes looking far away at the busy traffic, his heart filled with a loneliness he had never experienced before. In the mountains, no matter how poor he was, no matter how hard he trained, he still had his master by his side and a familiar home to return to every night. And here, in the middle of this huge city, he has nothing, except the clothes on his body and two items that his master told him to keep at all costs.

It started to get dark. The street lights turned on one after another, orange-yellow light spreading across the streets, beautiful but strange to a person like him who had just lost everything. His stomach began to rumble with hunger, but he didn't have a penny left in his pocket to buy a loaf of bread.

He remembered what his master told him before going down the mountain: "No matter what happens, don't rush to lose faith in others." Now, sitting in the middle of an unfamiliar street with an empty stomach and empty hands, he wondered whether he should continue to believe in that advice, or should he learn to be more vigilant like the old lady selling sugarcane juice advised.

He stood up, brushed the dust off his clothes, his eyes became steady again as if he had just regained his spirit from the internal exercises his master had taught him. Even though he was cheated out of money, he still had his hands, feet, and courage that twenty-five years of hard training in the mountains had forged. He couldn't let a small trick at the beginning of his life knock him down as soon as he set foot down the mountain.

"Okay, it's okay." He told himself, his voice soft amid the noise of the streets. "I still have my health and the martial arts my master taught me, so can't I take care of myself?"

He started walking, without a clear destination, just following the well-lit streets, hoping to find a corner to rest for the night, and then in the morning he would figure out how to find the address in the envelope. His stomach was hungry and his legs were tired, but he still tried to keep his gait straight, not revealing his pathetic appearance to passersby.

After walking a while, he stopped in front of a small roadside park, where a few stone benches were scattered under the shade of trees, and the streetlights cast a soft halo of light. He sat down on a chair, looking up at the city sky, where the light of electric lights completely overwhelmed the starlight, different from the starry sky on Vo Danh Mountain that he had been familiar with all his life.

Just not far away, in a luxurious, well-lit restaurant, a girl was sitting in a completely different kind of dilemma - not hungry, not under the sun, but just as struggling to find a way out as he was.

That night, Bach Dang fell asleep on a park bench, his hand still clutching his chest where the letter and piece of jade were hidden, his sleep restless because of his hungry stomach. At one point, he was startled awake by the sound of a car horn passing by, his hand reflexively grabbed his shirt before realizing there was nothing left to guard against, and then fell asleep again in the slowly falling cold of the city night. Less than a few streets away from the park bench where he lay, that girl - named Duong Gia Khue - was also tossing and turning because of an uninvited blind date, completely unaware that in just a few hours, she would be the one to pull this strange cloth-clad guy out of his hungry sleep, pushing them both into a funny and sad drama that no one had ever rehearsed.